Amin al-Hafiz

Amin al-Hafiz (1918-17 December 2009) was President of Syria from 27 July 1963 to 23 February 1966, succeeding Lu'ay al-Atassi and preceding Nureddin al-Atassi.

Biography
Amin al-Hafiz was born in 1918 in Aleppo, Syria to a Sunni Muslim family, and he served in the Syrian Army as a Brigadier. He was posted to Cairo, Egypt under the United Arab Republic, but when the 1961 Syrian coup d'etat occurred, he was sent to Argentina as military attache so that he would be far away from Syria. However, the 1963 Syrian coup d'etat allowed him to return home, and he became President of Syria on 27 July 1963. On 23 February 1966, he was overthrown by a radical Ba'ath Party member named Salah Jadid, and he went into exile in Iraq. Alongside fellow Ba'athist Michel Aflaq, he was treated like royalty by Saddam Hussein, and in 2003 he returned to Syria after Saddam's downfall. He died in Aleppo in 2009.